Europa Remastered: This '90s Space Image Has Been Retouched by NASA

It's not just old rock albums that get remastered when technology moves on: this image of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa, has just been given a revamp by scientists from NASA.

The mosaic image of the moon was first captured in the late 1990s, but now it's been remastered using modern image processing techniques. The original version (below), first published in 2001, featured colour profiles that had been amped right up, making contrast across the surface more obvious. The new image (above) is more subtle but apparently more akin to what the human eye would see if it were somehow in the vicinity.

Amateurs had previously tried their hands at the task, but this is the first time NASA has released their own efforts. The long, curving lines are fractures in the moon's bright ice shell. We still don't know exactly what they can tell us about the moon — but these remastered images could help us understand more than before. [NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute via Red Orbit]